ut me in a periodical called _The
Lounger_, a copy of which I here enclose you. I was, Sir, when I was
first honoured with your notice, too obscure; now I tremble lest I
should be ruined by being dragged too suddenly into the glare of learned
and polite observation.'

Burns was now indeed the lion of Edinburgh. It must have been a great
change for a man to have come straight from the stilts of the plough to
be dined and toasted by such men as Lord Glencairn, Lord Monboddo, and
the Hon. Henry Erskine; to be feted and flattered by the Duchess of
Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn, and Lady Betty Cunningham; to count
amongst his friends Mr. Mackenzie and Professors Stewart and Blair. It
would have been little wonder if his head had been turned by the
patronage of the nobility, the deference and attention of the literary
and learned coteries of Edinburgh. But Burns was too sensible to be
carried away by the adulation of a season. A man of his keenness of
penetration and clearness of insight would appreciate the praise of the
world at its proper value. He bore himself with becoming dignity, taking
his place in refined society as one who had a right there, without
showing himself either conceitedly aggressive or meanly servile. He took
his part in conversation, but no more than his part, and expressed
himself with freedom and decision. His conversation, in fact, astonished
the _literati_ even more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had
expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather
commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical
English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative
discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence of a poet, but with the
readiness, clearness, and fluency of a man of letters. His pure English
diction astonished them, but his acuteness of reasoning, his intuitive
knowledge of men and the world, was altogether beyond their
comprehension. All they had got by years of laborious study this man
appeared to have as a natural gift. In repartee, even, he could more
than hold his own with them, and in the presence of ladies could turn a
compliment with the best. 'It needs no effort of imagination,' says
Lockhart, 'to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of
scholars (almost all either clergymen or professors) must have been in
the presence of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, who,
having forced his way among them from the